Traditional rigid clothes hangers can often be challenging to use when attempting to slide them into place within shirts or sweaters with non-opening fronts or backs. Typically one must hold the rigid hanger in one hand while using the other hand to hold a non-opening shirt, such as a crew neck tee-shirt, at its waist opening and then thread the hanger through the center of the shirt with the first hand while positioning the shirt to drape over the hanger with the second hand. Because of the typically flexible and stretchable nature of clothing, a shirt will actually hang upside-down when being held at the waist opening as a hanger is inserted and it will not be righted until the hanger has passed the point of the center of gravity of the shirt, at which point the cloth of the shirt will drag over the hanger until it slides into place with the hanger hook projecting through the neck opening of the shirt. These movements can often be challenging and clothing can often be permanently stretched or damaged, especially if a garment has an especially small neck opening or is made of delicate material, such as a fine wool sweater. Removing a garment from a rigid hanger can be equally as challenging and potentially damaging to the garment as it essentially requires the reversal of the same steps for hanging the garment.
Because of the difficulties associated with using rigid clothes hangers with non-opening garments, it would be preferable to have a collapsing clothes hanger which could fold in some manner so that the supportive features of the hanger could pass easily through a garment's neck opening from above and then expand within the center of the garment to then support the shoulder portions of the garment as the hook feature of the hanger remains sticking out above the neck opening of the garment. Many such designs have been proposed in the past with the common elements of having shoulder support features which hinge pivotably about axes which pass through a smaller center section which has a support hook attached. When the shoulder support features of such designs are pivoted downward to a more closed position they can be passed through the neck opening of a garment and then expanded back out to a more open position where they effectively support the garment as the hook feature of the hanger remains outside of the garment so as to be placed over a hook or closet hanger rod.
One common shortcoming of many folding hanger designs is that although they may be easily folded, they may be much more difficult to open back up to a rigid position, especially if using only one hand. This drawback makes it very difficult to use one hand to insert the folded hanger into the neck opening of a garment being held by a second hand and then expand it within the garment using the first hand. Furthermore, because of the flexible nature of most garments they will drape down along the members of a folded hanger and the weight of the garment will offer significant resistance to expanding the hanger back to a supportive position. Some folding hanger designs attempt to overcome the resistance to expanding caused by a garment by use of some manner of resilient biasing means, such as a spring that will be compressed as the shoulder supports are folded. This approach is inherently flawed in that in order for the spring force to effectively counteract the resistance from the heaviest of garments, it must possess a spring resistance that would be overkill for the lightest of garments. Therefore the spring reinforced folding hanger designs may be exceptionally challenging to fold with one hand as intended, due to a more forceful spring being used than typically necessary in order to insure that it is strong enough to support the heaviest of garments.